Published byStanford Medicine

Sleep-deprived teenagers tend to make poor nutritional choices compared to their well-rested friends, according to findings presented at the recent annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

In the study, researchers explored the connection between sleep duration and food choices using a national representative sample of more than 13,200 teenagers from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. A release from Stony Brook University School of Medicine offers more details about the results and their significance:

The authors found that those teens who reported sleeping fewer than seven hours per night — 18 percent of respondents — were more likely to consume fast food two or more times per week and less likely to eat healthful food such as fruits and vegetables. The results took into account factors such as age, gender, race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, physical activity and family structure, and found that short sleep duration had an independent effect on both healthy and unhealthy food choices.

…

“We are interested in the association between sleep duration and food choices in teenagers because adolescence is a critical developmental period between childhood and adulthood,” said the first author of the study, Allison Kruger, MPH, a community health worker at Stony Brook University Hospital. “Teenagers have a fair amount of control over their food and sleep, and the habits they form in adolescence can strongly impact their habits as adults.”

The findings add to the growing body of research showing that not getting enough sleep can increase an individual’s risk of obesity.

One Response to “
Want teens to eat healthy? Make sure they get a good night's sleep ”

Thank you for sharing this important article, Ms. Steakley. The saddest thing about teen sleep deprivation is that our public school system is engineering a chronic cycle of sleep debt with early school start times. For this reason, I co-founded Start School Later, Inc., a non-profit, non-partisan advocacy group to ensure that US students get the sleep they need to improve their health, safety and equity. I invite you to learn more about the sleep crunch due to early school start times at our website, http://www.StartSchoolLater.net